A scary ‘right’ to health care

Published: April 9, 2010

What kind of a “right” mandates that you exercise it? For example, imagine a law that imposes a monetary fine on anyone who does not own a gun or who does not belong to a church. Can you imagine The New York Times, or NBC, or any other component of the left-stream media describing such laws as guaranteeing a right to bear arms and to practice religion? Yet the left-stream media invariably lauds Obamacare as guaranteeing a right to health care.Saying that Obamacare guarantees a right to health care is at best nonsensical. It’s like saying that that the Internal Revenue Code guarantees a right to pay taxes. Of course, the Orwellian use of language by the left-stream media is quite deliberate. The left-stream media is in the tank for Obama because he, like them, wants to turn the United States into a European-style nanny-state.And we are almost there. The PGA Championship is known as “glory’s last shot” because it is the last of golf’s four majors. The 2010 and 2012 elections may be called “freedom’s last shot” because they may be our last shot to stop the descent to the ant heap of totalitarianism.The present Supreme Court of the United States is not going to strike down Obamacare. There are four incorrigible left-leaning judicial activists on the Supreme Court, so all Obama needs to do is pick off one other justice.Justice Anthony Kennedy famously flipped his vote in the Casey case because he feared the opprobrium of the chattering class if Roe v. Wade were overturned. It’s hard to see him being the fifth vote to strike down Obamacare. And while I am sure Justice Antonin Scalia could care less how his vote plays politically, based on his concurring opinion in Gonzales v. Raich (the California medical marijuana case), it’s also hard to see Scalia voting to strike down Obamacare. So, the 2010 and 2012 elections will be, to borrow a phrase famously used by Ronald Reagan nearly 50 years ago, a time for choosing. The choice is between liberty, on the one hand, and the illusion of security and the reality of government control, on the other. Obamacare represents a moral judgment that the end — providing accessible and affordable health care to everyone (or, more accurately, what government deems to be accessible and affordable health care) — justifies the means, denying the individual the right to choose whether to carry health insurance.Such a moral judgment leads inexorably to health-care rationing and heavy and ubiquitous government control over our lives.If the goal of accessible and affordable health care is to be treated as paramount, then the so-called individual mandate is just the tip of the governmental power iceberg. Government also would have the power to prevent any one person from using too much health care because that could make health care inaccessible and unaffordable for everyone else.Likewise, government would have the power to prevent you from engaging in activities that might lead to your “over-utilizing” health care. To name just a few examples, riding motorcycles on interstate highways, skydiving, bungee cord jumping, and hiking a 4,000-footer between Dec. 1 and April 30 could all be prohibited or discouraged in the name of health-care accessibility and affordability.And there is no denying how important diet is to health. Restaurants could be required to obtain governmental approval for their menus. Grocery stores could be required to replace red meat with soybean shakes.Of course, the left will say this is all fear-mongering. Well, I have a couple of questions for them. How many new federal agencies are created by Obamacare (I understand over 150), and what specifically is each agency’s authority?Ed Mosca is an attorney who lives in Manchester.

This article appears in the April 9 2010 issue of New Hampshire Business Review